Scientists developing more efficiency of super thin solar cells

A new way called nanopatterning technique has been developed by Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) in improving super thin solar cell efficiency which it is about thousand times thinner than conventional solar cells. Get support from Swiss National Science Foundation and the Federal Office of Energy, the scientists try to increase super thin solar cell to has same or more efficiency with conventional silicon solar cells.

The purpose of making super-thin film solar cells was to reduce costs and energy to make silicon solar cells from the sand. The researchers intend to boost the ability of thin silicon solar cells to capture more light. They used thin layers of zinc oxide which grows in the form of small pyramid-shaped crystals to get better light absorption of layers. It's able to spread the light efficiently into the underlying silicon layer. The material such zinc oxide layers could have led scientists to achieve the solar cell record efficiency.

The researchers also try to reduce the cost of solar cells by modify the crystals natural pyramidal shape to obtain better light scattering. They force the crystals to grow on a different support, an inverted mould with the desired structure. The procedure will improve solar cells to capture the light thereby increasing the output. Indirectly, it also helped to reduce the cost of solar cells due to its compatibility with mass production.